Pony Of Prey Blog

Poor safety standards and sanitary conditions is going to cost a Rotherham business man a fine of £5,000, plus £3,000 in costs, the Rotherham Magistrates’ Court has ruled.

Mir Baz Khan last week pleaded guilty to violations of the Construction Design & Management Regulations of 2007 as well as the Health & Safety at Work Act of 1974. The case was compelling against Mr. Khan, as prosecutors outlined how the Health and Safety Executive (or HSE) had three times visited an apartment site, which Khan was developing.

During those visits, HSE representatives discovered unsafe conditions with electrical installations, scaffolding, as well as fire hazards. They also cited substandard eating facilities and a lack of sufficient toilets.

Following each visit, HSE inspectors shut down the site. Nonetheless, Khan continued re-opening the sites without HSE authorization.

Rob Cooper, an inspector with HSE who is associated with the case, noted that they had tried unsuccessfully to get Khan to bring the site up to HSE standards. They repeatedly gave him advice on how to do so.

Despite this, Cooper Said, Khan “failed repeatedly” to implement the recommended changes. As a result, Cooper said, “Khan now has a criminal record.”

Don’t fall victim to the wrath of the HSE, get up to date with the latest practices with IOSH training from Workplace Law.

Building webpages can be a lot of fun, in fact many people build webpages as a hobby and eventually start doing it for pay. When I started building webpages I but it was pretty cool that you can express yourself through Web design, but eventually realized that I could make money selling a product on my site and using search engines strive traffic to those pages.

I had to learn the hard way that the simpler a page is the better, and content is the thing I need to focus on the most. Luckily writing content was actually one of my strong suits and became my career later on as a copywriter.

It’s been 10 years since I started building webpages. Just about everybody I know is in the field of web design and Internet marketing.

Me and my friends used to just sit around planning on building websites for other people, we never thought that this is how we would make our money later in life! At first it was just a hobby just something fun to do and we like getting props from our friends for building such awesome pages.

To us this was just good practice and it got her name out. Several years later we’ll all realized that without traffic a webpage is worthless to anybody so we learned seo strategies and started building webpages that got a lot of traffic from search engines.

My first website had so many animations on it, like animated gif’s and flash objects, that it took an hour to upload the page to my server and not one person would wait 30 minutes it took for the page to load! Back then this page actually froze up any computer that tried to look at it!

Doesn’t it frustrate you when you’ve given good service, sometimes super service, and the customer doesn’t pay you?

Some of them aren’t doing too well and are struggling for cash, but, gee, so are you. In the time they take to pay they could have paid off a little each week and the debt would be gone.

You know others have the money but it takes them six months of sending them copy after copy of invoices, letters and telephone calls before they open their purse…

And often the worst are Government Departments and large businesses. You don’t want to lose sales to these customers but your cash-flow is hurting and you dropped your price to get the contract as well.

Is there any way to stop it?

Perhaps not completely, but there are ways to control the problem. Owners should have a clearly defined Rules of Credit which is known to staff and customers…and they should apply them consistently.

Many owners started off with some rules but over the years they have become lax at applying them. Customers and staff have become so used to breaking them that it’s as though there are no rules at all.

The minimum rules are:

• Credit check for all new clients
• Credit limit for all clients
• Terms of payment 7 days, 30 days etc. Customers will have to negotiate a longer period.
• Procedure for letters 1, 2 and 3.
• Procedure for phone calls after letters.
• Cash Sales only after limit is reached or deviation from payment policy.
• Procedure for debt collection.
  
  
  
  
  It doesn’t matter what the rules are, as long as your customers know them and know that you will apply them without favor.

  You may need some help from your accountant to fine-tune the procedure and help with the letters and telephone script. http://www.profitstrategies4business.com

  

  About the Author

  Kelvyn Peters CPA is one of the longest serving Tax Agents in Australia. He registered as a tax agent in 1962 and was appointed as a CPA in 1964.

  He is well-known for his ability to rescue an ailing business. http://www.profitstrategies4business.com

IT consulting is more than just knowing all about laptops and servers. To be successful, you need to have business skills, too. This article will give you some examples of skills you need for your IT consulting business.

Good Data Management Will Keep You Organized

You should have strong spreadsheet skills and hopefully know Excel pretty well. There will be all kinds of data you will need to put together for internal use and for client’s use. For time management, you need to know how to draw the line. You will need to keep on schedule and keep priorities in check.

The Phone Will Be Your Friend

For IT consulting, you will need good verbal skills, and feel comfortable on the phone. Because you are going to need that for following up on leads and setting up appointments. You’ll also need good phone skills for providing tech support and for keeping clients and vendors in check.

Speaking Effectively in Public Might Close the Deal

In IT consulting, you’ll be doing small group presentations. You’ll be doing these with an internal training or on a sales call. You are going to be talking to 3, 4, 5 as much as 10 people at once sometimes. You may get a company where they will bring in literally all of their middle management to grill you on the solution to make sure you have it.

Proper Grammar and Spelling Will Let Your Professionalism Shine Through

You should have decent word processing and email communications skills to get with your clients, prospects and partners. Those are some of the important business skills.

The Bottom Line about IT Consulting

Much of what determines someone’s success in IT consulting is his business skills rather than technical proficiency. If you have deficiencies in these skills, now is the time to work on them so you can stay in the IT consulting field for the long haul.

Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consulting 101 Blog. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}

Joshua Feinberg, co-founder of Computer Consulting 101, helps computer consulting businesses get more steady, high-paying clients. Learn how you can too. Sign-up now for your free access to these field-tested, proven business strategies on the Computer Consulting 101 Blog.

Okay so I do a lot of research; have traveled afar and obviously I have something to say. Ah; “Rants from Lance” indeed. Yes in fact it is over do but it is time; It is Soap Box time; I Read an interesting article today about the fact that 80% of all penalties for employment withholding costs were fined to small businesses with under ten employees. Probably because when the large companies were small they were fined and learned along the way, as they got bigger to outsource employment tasks or hire attorneys to slow down the investigating agencies. I say this fact has made a market niche for employment agencies and taken another fee from the laborers.

For instance many of our franchisees have hired employees through temporary or employment agencies because of the time involved in accounting and penalties from an anti-small business group of regulators and a huge employment government agency in many states. Which attack businesses to justify their own existence. Interestingly enough these government agencies burn up half of all monies collected in administration. Those unemployment agencies need to charge more fines to stay in business, now they have more output and accusations amongst laid off workers fly and these agencies investigate even though most claims are false and lies from disgruntled, low out put employees who want something for nothing.

For instance I can call up the unemployment board of nearly any state and without any proof can make up a charge and they will go investigate it. Similar to the FTC which I know first hand does, having attacked my company based on false complaints and declarations coming from competitors. They are criminals at the FTC, well, at least the case-worker in our deal. The FTC has industry coordinators for various sectors within their once great Kennedy organization, suffer from low self-esteem, save the world, conspiracy theorist attitudes, abusive power energies and rottenness.

(CYA; but of course those case workers and prosecuting attorneys who reviewed our case are at the height and pinnacle of ethical echelon and should receive a Nobel Prize for their work in Industry and helping consumers throughout the world and making it a better and cleaner Planet for all future generations of mankind. Working diligently to make sure that the waterways of commerce which transverse the strongest nation in the world are kept pure and fair, yah sure?) I love those CYAs don’t you? Well get use to them.

Now, Let us look at the California department of Automotive Services, who claims they will investigate any auto repair case even if you are not sure there was a crime. Why? To justify the numbers of cases worked on, for the amount of overly increasing budgets every year. They have a whole fleet of several thousand cars, which we have on occasion washed. http://www.carwashguys.com . I do not mean to under mind the need for referees in the free enterprise system or endorse Smoot and his book “The Business end of Government” which everyone should read. But by attacking small business we have inadvertently put a layer of profit taking from workers salaries that is a tax on business and additional monies coming out of bonuses that real life workers may have earned to send their kids to college, donate to charity, increase standard of living and quality of life issues, help pay off mortgages and allow them to work to earn their American dream.

The same liberal attitude, which has permeated the regulatory process in America is destroying it by leveling the playing field and supporting the weakest and most inefficient of all organizations. Government. You know I am right, look for yourself. Everyday I get corporate propaganda from employment services wanting a piece of our franchisees total allocation for labor in turn for helping them with the maze of regulations of employment taxes, hiring, OSHA, workmen’s compensation claim attorneys and rules bordering on rape type penalties to small business and background checks now required for working in specialty ones like airports, DOT yards, post offices and other locations.

Am I making more out of what is really killing America? Absolutely not, no way, I am right on the money. I or any small business person for that matter will tell you, it is the reality. I have also been receiving the DOT and OSHA regulations and case laws for some time now to put into binders taking up 15% of my personal business library. The actual OSHA standards are now 56 stories high if you stacked them on top of one another. One attorney who handles government contracts told me in San Antonio yesterday that perhaps we should throw them off the top. Referring to regulators of that agency. He said the worst agency of record was clearly the EPA. We have finally beaten them and are in 100% compliance until they start changing laws again to save the unborn gay pregnant whales from nuclear fallout, terrorism, and botulism. Not that, those are not all great causes but very few have anything to do with the price of rice in China or small business or in my case car washing for that matter.

I see a direct from Dell approach to the problem. Simplify the process of payroll contributions by having one system in all 50 states, all of which runs on Microsoft Word 2002, use that as a settlement form any upcoming mean complaints filed by Steve Case, a case worker in himself hyping numbers and projections and worse than Enron, Global Crossing, UAL, AMR, Nortel, etc. If it were simplified and on Microsoft Office and that was part of Intuits quick books then anyone could figure out the payroll contributions and the remaining monies paid to the employment agencies would be redistributed to small business for expansion or given to the vary workers themselves as a productivity bonus. Anyone from Tom Peters to Friedrich Winslow Taylor would agree that this is the best stimulus package for small business.

I recently looked at the SBA loans for small business due to terrorism and found that only about 55 million dollars in loans nationwide; Pathetic really, absolutely pathetic. Although the ramp up time and Congressional delays and bureaucracy made these funds unavailable in real time, hundreds of thousands of small businesses are no longer with us. Why? Why, damn it; answer me. You pathetic losers; whose team are you on. Arguing about BS putting into the minutes; hours of discussion that any entrepreneur worth his salt could have done in seconds. Letting America disintegrate is a terrorist act.

End Part I “Soap Box Time; Rants from Lance”

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Are you used to making money but now find yourself at home watching the kids and making none of your own money? Do you wish they had work for stay home moms like I did?

I don’t know about you but I like to know I earned my own money and that I’m contributing to the household financial needs. I found myself trapped years ago because it was just too hard to work and find a babysitter for the kids.

Then I found out that you can actually make money from your computer and internet connection and I jumped on board faster than a late skipper before his ship embarked.. I’ve since found an amazing career while at home all day!

I know you’ve heard it a million times but its no longer such a long shot with the real world needs for writers and other great internet jobs!

The internet slowly changed things in the way companies did business and more and more options for online businesses started to appear. This is a great opportunity to bring work for stay home moms and anyone else looking for work who can’t leave the house.

Many disabled people can find work on the internet when the real world out there isn’t giving them a break. The internet jobs give you back your freedom and an income comparable to the offline jobs!

As a woman, you’re so good at addressing the needs of your family or your community.

If your child gets hurt on the monkey bars, you rush in to make it better. If your church needs volunteers for a bake sale, you’re the first to put your hand up. If your local food bank appeals for more non-perishable items, you’re the first in line at the grocery store.

You are able to find needs in everything around you, yet you stumble when it comes to your own business.

It’s time to use your sixth sense for your business as well. Look for a need, then address it by developing a product or service.

• Don’t just launch yet-another-virtual-assistant company. Ask your target audience what’s missing, then fill that need.

• Don’t write yet-another-ebook on a topic that’s been beaten to death. Instead, ask your clients what their biggest problem is then fill that need with a well-researched information product.

• If you notice spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in someone’s writings, send them a quick email offering your editing services.

• Don’t just become yet-another-professional-organizer. Instead, ask busy people why they would hire someone to organize their space, then start your business satisfying that need.

When someone tells you they have a need and you offer your services, don’t look at this as a hard sell. Look at this as a smart sell.

While you may be a great mom or a great volunteer, it’s now time to use your nurturing trait for your business as well. Your prosperity depends on this.

Leesa Barnes, Chief Divapreneur, helps women start a new business or launch an idea on a shoestring budget. Through her coaching programs, speaking engagements and interactive workshops, Leesa is on a mission to help 10,000 women become their own boss by 2010, even if they lack the confidence or start-up capital to do so. Sign up for the Divapreneurs At Work ezine by visiting http://www.savialane.com and receive a F R E E ebook called The One Thing 85 Women (and One Man) Used to Build a Profitable Business (And It Ain’t Money).

Whether you want to start a Home Business to make a part-time income or to replace your
full time job, there are some steps you will need to take to make the process easier. Of course,
you can leave these steps out, but you will find it much harder to focus and will be easily distracted
from your goals.

The Internet is now a huge marketplace for any business. More and more people use the Internet everyday
to purchase anything from clothes to cars, and you CAN cash in on this phenomenon. Even if you have virtually
no experience of Internet Marketing you can literally start up an Online Home Business overnight.

Here are 7 simple steps you should take to ensure that you start the best home business to suit your lifestyle:

1. Set your Home Business Goals.

It is essential to set goals and objectives and then design strategies for attaining them. This will be your Business Plan.

Take the time to write down your questions and answers and thoroughly research your chosen market.

2. Identify your Internet Business Market.

Use search engines such as Google and Overture to find out where you customers will come from. Look for sites selling
similar items and forums related to your product or service.

3. Choose a Domain Name that reflects your Internet Business.

This is an important step as your Domain Name will be used to identify the type of business you run. Try to come up with a name
that reflects your business - e.g.if your business is selling widgets you should try to include the term “widget” in your domain name.
The ideal name for this example would be “widget.com” but you could also use names like “best-widgets.com” or “wholesalewidgets.com”.

4. Find a good Web Host and build a simple but professional website.

You can use free hosting if you are really strapped for cash, but this is not a good idea. There are a number of Webhosting Companies
that offer very good services for only a few dollars a month.

5. Create your Unique Selling Point (UPS).

Make your customers think you are an expert on the product or service you are providing. If you offer expert opinion, your customers
will feel more secure buying from yur website.

6. Market your new website on the Internet.

Here are some ways you can market your Internet Business. These are not the only ways to get traffic to your site, but they are the most
popular. When it comes to advertising your website, get creative!

7. Track your sales and visitors.

Tracking your sales and visitors allows you to analyse your promotion methods. You can decide which methods are working well for you and
which you need to improve on.

If you follow these smple steps you will have the basis for a Home Business on the Internet that could provide you with extra income if you
just want to work part time - or with full-time income if you want to quit your job and work at home. One last word of advice…..don’t give up
your job until you are sure your Home Business can provide for you and your family!

CJ Maguire is an Internet Entrpreneur/World Traveller. She make her living by running various Internet Based Businesses. You can visit her
website at: http://best-home-business-guide.com/

Diversify to Survive

© 2002 Elena Fawkner

Over the past few weeks and months the news headlines have been
focused on Wall Street and the downward spiral of all of the
major stock indexes. As usual when one of these shake- outs
occurs, the popular media tries to reduce the issues to easy to
understand, bite-size morsels. A favorite strategy is to profile
a “typical” small investor who had all his eggs in one basket
when the market crashed and now his entire life savings are
nothing more than red ink on his personal balance sheet.

Had our typical small investor diversified his portfolio,
investing some of his capital in blue chip stocks, some in tech
stocks, some in property, some in bonds, chances are he would
still be in the black. The same can be said for anyone running
an online business. The online environment is so dynamic and
volatile, and so many so-called “hot” opportunities come and go
(and don’t do much in between), that devoting your entire
enterprise to just one product or service offering is nothing
short of dangerous, if not outright foolish.

The answer, then, is to place a few eggs in several baskets, so
if the bottom falls out of one, you can still make an omelet
with what’s left. In other words, diversify your product and
service offerings to generate multiple streams of income.

SOURCES OF INCOME

Here’s five ideas to get you started:

1. Affiliate programs. 2. Own products and services. 3. Website
advertising. 4. Ezine advertising. 5. Content access via
subscription.

We’ll look at each of these individually in a moment, but first,
one important caveat. The concept of multiple streams of income
does NOT mean you should rush out and add new products and
services to your repertoire willy-nilly.

Whatever you choose to offer must be closely related to the
subject matter of your site. If your site is about pet care,
don’t try and sell saucepans. To do so is not only a waste of
valuable time and other resources but you compromise the
integrity of your site’s purpose, not to mention your
credibility as an expert in your field.

But even more importantly than that, all traffic is not created
equal. Sure, if you create a separate page on your pet care
website just for your new saucepan line you may attract one or
two site visitors you may not have attracted otherwise. But
those visitors were interested in saucepans, not pet care. Once
they reach your site they’ll assume you’ve lost the plot and
click away faster than you can say “where’d he go?”.

Far, far better to have fewer site visitors who are all highly
interested and motivated by the subject matter of your site
(highly targeted traffic) than relatively more visitors who are
only somewhat interested and motivated (untargeted traffic).

The return on your investment will always be MUCH higher from
targeted traffic in the form of repeat visits, referrals,
recommendations and, of course, all-important sales.

OK, let’s turn now to the five sources of income.

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

The first and most obvious source of income is affiliate
programs. I’m sure most of you are already well-familiar with
the concept but, if not, you can get a quick primer by reading
the article at http://www.ahbbo.com/affiliate.html .

To be effective as an income-generator, the affiliate programs
you choose should be closely related to the subject matter of
your site in the sense that a visitor interested in your website
content will also be interested in the subject matter of the
affiliate program you are promoting.

To start your search for appropriate affiliate programs, visit
http://www.associatesearch.com and/or http://www.refer-it.com .

OWN PRODUCTS

While affiliate programs are a good place to start, you are
working on commission. For significant, long-term, sustainable
income you need to develop your own line of products and
services. This does not necessarily mean you must personally
create the product or service; it just means you get to keep the
profits on any sale. You could, for example, sell products you
purchase from a wholesaler. Under this type of arrangement, you
buy the product for a certain price and sell it for a higher
price. The difference is your profit. The profit under this type
of arrangement will, 99% of the time, be significantly higher
than the commission income you generate with affiliate programs.
If you don’t want to bother with the hassle of storing inventory
and shipping orders, make arrangements for the wholesaler to
drop-ship orders to your customers instead.

Of course, you can always create your own products as well. A
good option for an online business is a digital product such as
an e-book since production and distribution costs are extremely
low. Your customer simply downloads the product from your server
to her hard disk. But you don’t have to restrict yourself to
digital products. You might choose to write a book and have it
professionally bound and printed. Or you may choose to make your
book available in both digital and traditional format with
different price points to reflect the different production and
shipping costs.

WEBSITE ADVERTISING

Once you have generated consistently high, targeted traffic to
your website, you can begin to think about charging for third
party advertising on some of your website real estate. The price
you can charge for banner advertising depends on your traffic
whether your advertiser pays you to simply host his banner or
whether she pays you per click-through. Particularly if your
revenue depends on click-through it is very important (both for
you and your advertiser in terms of repeat business) that your
advertiser’s product or service is relevant to the overall
subject matter of your website.

Your pricing would generally be set at a CPM rate, for example
$20 per thousand page views. So, if your site receives 5,000
page views a week, that’s $100 a week in advertising revenue.
The more targeted your traffic, the more you can charge as your
CPM.

EZINE ADVERTISING

You have, I’m sure, heard it said many times that a great way to
generate traffic to your website is to publish an ezine
(electronic magazine or newsletter). That’s certainly true.
Ezines are a terrific traffic generator. But they can also be a
source of revenue in their own right.

Once you hit 1,000 subscribers (as a general rule) you can start
charging for advertising in your ezine. Again, CPM is a good
pricing model to start with.

Again, the more targeted your subscriber database, the higher
your CPM. Some very highly targeted, specialized ezines can
charge as much as $40 CPM or more. Others that are very general
and untargeted may only be able to generate $2 CPM. Again, the
time and effort you expend in targeting your market audience,
the higher your potential revenue.

CONTENT ACCESS

The number one commodity people are looking for online is
information. Consider making your website content available on a
members-only basis, charging a membership fee for access. Your
content has to be of genuine value to your website visitors,
however. Don’t try this if all you’re offering is a collection
of other people’s articles.

The type of content that lends itself well to this type of
arrangement includes things like apartments for rent listings
(eg http://www.westsiderentals.com ), home-based job openings,
that sort of thing.

Members-only sites that consist of a collection of freely
available products and tools can also work well if, by joining,
the member saves him or herself many hours of independent
searching and collating the relevant materials.

Apart from information, entertainment-type content also lends
itself well to a pay-for-access type of arrangement. The obvious
(if unfortunate) example is the highly lucrative internet
pornography industry. Say what you will about it, it is a
business model that most online entrepreneurs would love to be
able to replicate in their own industry, if only they could
generate the same level of interest. It’s that targeted traffic
principle yet again!

As I said, these are just a few ideas to get you started. Once
you start implementing these, others will suggest themselves to
you. It really doesn’t matter what you do so long as it works
for you. By all means, if something works well, don’t stop what
you’re doing. But don’t rest on your laurels either. Make sure
you always have other wells to drill if today’s runs dry.

——

** Reprinting of this article is welcome! ** This article may be
freely reproduced provided that: (1) you include the following
resource box; and (2) you only mail to a 100% opt-in list.

Here’s the resource box to use if reprinting this article:

——

Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online …
practical business ideas, opportunities and solutions for the
work-from-home entrepreneur. http://www.ahbbo.com

If you are a consumer looking to run your own business perhaps you have gone online and reviewed the many options out there? Perhaps you were over whelmed with the choices. Choice is good in America and one of the many hallmarks of free enterprise. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) realizes this and routinely checks to make sure that the sellers of Business Opportunities or “Biz Ops” are toeing the line and not committing any fraud.

Occasionally these Biz Op Sweeps do catch those who are less than ethical in their business dealings to protect your money and all consumers of business opportunities. Here below is an excerpt of the enforcement actions taken by the FTC;

“Biz Op sweeps many with other federal and state law enforcement partners, to combat persistent business opportunity scams violating the Franchise Rule, such as those involving the sale of E.g., Project Telesweep (1995); Operation Missed Fortune (1996); Project Trade Name Games (1997); Project Vend Up Broke (1998); Project Bizillion$ (1999); Project Busted Opportunity (2002); and Project Biz Opp Flop (2005). In addition to joint law enforcement sweeps, Commission staff has also targeted specific business opportunity ventures such as 900 numbers (Project Buylines 1996); vending (Project Yankee Trader 1997); seminars (Operation Showtime 1998); medical billing (Project House Call 1998); and Internet-related services (Net Opportunities 1998). vending machines, rack displays, public telephones, Internet kiosks, and 900-number ventures, among others.”

Some Biz Ops such as vitamin sales have said that the FTC only goes after them due to the strong Pharmaceutical Industry Lobby. Other sectors in the Biz Op Industry complain about similar attacks. Nevertheless, the FTC’s job is to foster competition in the market place while protecting the consumer and we all hope they will live up to their promise. Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/